


Inside

by misanthropyray



Series: Innocent Smile [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Animal Death, Childhood, Gen, young!Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-06
Updated: 2011-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropyray/pseuds/misanthropyray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's always been curious for more. To go deeper. To take a look on the inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside

**Author's Note:**

> Rated R for descriptions of animal cruelty.Enormous thank yous to [](http://eckax.livejournal.com/profile) **[eckax](http://eckax.livejournal.com/),**  my ever faithful cheerleader and motivator, and to [](http://thisprettywren.livejournal.com/profile) **[thisprettywren](http://thisprettywren.livejournal.com/)** , my resident punctuation genius and sounding board (All remaining mistakes are entirely my own).

No one listens to me.

Sometimes I’m not even sure I want them to listen. If they were listening, there would be interacting and if there were interacting, there would small talk and games and laughter; all the things people expect children to enjoy. No, I would rather be alone.

When I was expelled for the third time in year 4, after the teacher overreacted about a tiny fire which was definitely under control, Mummy and Daddy decided that home schooling would be the way forward. As I already had a reading age of 16, they would lay out the course materials and a set of exams and the rest was up to me. Well, as long as I passed the exams. Once, I was distracted with my own research into tobacco ash variations and sitting the paper may have accidentally slipped my mind. I was banned from the library for two weeks.

I say ‘two weeks’, they rescinded their petty punishment after only six days; following resignation letters arriving from a chef, a head gardener and two cleaners. I was allowed back into the library but banned from the servants’ wing, which suited me to a T.

I decided a more fruitful use of my time would be to concentrate on the boring text books and exam papers and get through them as quickly as possible. I find it difficult to believe that, had I been kept in school, it would have taken me another 4 years to accomplish what I did in 8 months. I often worry that, one day, the world will just stop when it gets bogged down with the sheer weight of human stupidity. It’s lucky for us that there’s the basic laws of physics to keep it turning, isn’t it?

That was two years ago. Now my time is my own to pursue whatever interests I wish.

Mycroft is home from university, so top of the list of ‘things I wish to do’ is avoid him.

When I leave the house, I tell Enid, the housekeeper, that I’m going riding through the woods, a ruse which I hope will keep them off my track for a few hours at least. I’m not entirely sure she’s really listening and she laughs and tries to ruffle my hair, though luckily I can dodge her hand in time. She scrapes her knuckle on the armoire behind me. The surprise stuns her for a moment and her hand hangs in midair as the scratch reddens and a droplet of blood forms on the surface of her wrinkled skin. We both stare at it for a moment in silence and I feel overwhelmed by the urge to taste the shining redness. Reaching out and taking the hovering hand into mine, I touch my lips to her papery skin; it tastes like sucking a teaspoon.

“There. I’ve kissed it better for you.”

But it’s too late; I’ve made her uncomfortable and she squints slightly at me, covering it quickly with a smile and excuses of things to do in the kitchen.

I pull on my wax Barbour, the pockets pre-stuffed with my equipment for the day, and set off in the opposite direction of the stables. I walk through the carefully clipped hedgerows on the west side of the grounds and make my way towards the stream at the border of the estate. I know a weeping willow there whose branches can be sat under to obscure one from view entirely.

I’ve spent weeks constructing a den, of sorts, under the tree’s canopy. I’ve adapted its trunk to house a series of staggered shelves, where I can store things acquired from the house that one may not want to be caught with in one’s bedroom. I sit cross-legged on the blanket which I stole from the picnic hamper weeks ago, emptying my jacket pockets and sorting the contents into the tree’s compartments.

I finish putting away the smaller bits and bobs before getting to the main event; an assortment of bullets I stole from Daddy’s hunting cabinet, a small piece of foil that’s gold coloured on one side and silvery on the other (could have fascinating electrical conducting properties), four 9v batteries, and a Zippo lighter I lifted from the gardener’s jacket pocket whilst he was seeing the cook’s daughter ‘for tea’.

For storing larger objects, the tree has roots on one side that have risen slighting, causing a hollow underneath. It was easy to widen the hole and reinforce the sides a little to make a space of about a cubic foot. Yesterday, I had managed to squirrel away a special treasure from the house which was now safely wrapped in a sheet in the hollow and was going to be the soul subject of my attentions for the day. Carefully removing the bundle, I placed it up on my viewing platform (made from an old cupboard door and nailed into the first layer of branches) and clambered up to lay on my stomach along the branch. Taking a moment to get my balance, I edged closer to the viewing platform, so my face was only a couple of inches away from my prize and slowly unfurled the sheet.

I want to rip it off in a split second, but I feel a flutter of excitement just like what I’m led to believe people feel at Christmas, so I savour it. I peel back the last layer and the small carriage clock from the second study shines out, brilliantly gold beneath. I run my hands along its ornate surfaces and wish I had a magnifying glass to see the details I knew I must be missing. My fingers drag across the edges and corners and trace over the pattern of a twisting vine alone each side. My brain hums, taking in the beauty of the exterior but now I need more; I need to see the inside. The anticipation is just too much for me all of a sudden and I reach into my pocket for my trusty mini screwdriver.

I turn the clock over and unscrew the tiny fixings one by one, carefully arranging them across the makeshift desk. I realise I’m holding my breath as I try to lift off the outer layer and sticks for a second, them comes away in jolt. Underneath, the tiny cogs and springs move together in perfectly fluid motion. I simply lay on the branch and watch for a moment, before continuing my work. I was confident that I could completely deconstruct the clock and return it, fully functioning, to the study by the end of the day. The key to that would be organisation. I removed the parts, laying them out in perfect little rows on the wooden surface. It was all going perfectly, each part categorised in my head when a gust of wind rushed through the branches and swept two tiny cogs and one of the hands onto the ground below.

If I couldn’t find all the parts, my plan was in serious danger of being scuppered, so I clambered down and knelt in the dust, splaying my hands out in search of any glimmer of gold in the dirt. The clock’s hand is easy to find but the cogs are somewhat more elusive.

There’s a rustling of leaves behind me. I can’t stop a sharp and potentially incriminating intake of breath as I scramble to my feet and turn around, enclosing the clock hand in my fist and shoving both hands into my pockets again.

But the noise didn’t come from a person. I thought maybe the sound of the stream outside had covered the crunching footfalls of a person’s approach or maybe I had suffered an appalling lapse in concentration, accidentally allowing someone to breach my private hideaway, but relief washed over me as I gazed upon the intruder.

A ginger tabby cat sauntering into the lair; looking scruffy and gaunt, it had clearly been wandering the great British countryside for some time, getting into a few scrapes along the way, going by the half an ear it was missing on its left side. The cat strode up to me and rubbed its scrawny face against my legs, starting to purr without any obvious reciprocation on my part. Besides the horses, we’d never owned any pets. Unsure how to react to the cat, I knelt down and reached my hand towards it, feeling a pang of uncertainty. The cat turned and crushed its head into my fingers, rubbing back and forth as I felt the vibrations from its loud purring and the warmth spreading across my palm.

Then an idea came to me.

My other hand remained fisted in my pocket and began feeling around; silently searching for the cold metal I knew to be in there somewhere. My thumb grazed against the engraved silver of the penknife I’d received for Christmas last year and I flicked it out, running the tips of my fingers across the sharpened blade.

At that point, I’m sure the cat knew what was happening; rolling onto its back and displaying its soft underbelly for me whilst gently batting its paws against my hand in consent. I reached down and tentatively buried my fingers into the orange fur of the cat’s neck before pressing down and pinning it to the ground. In a flash, the cat began to hiss and thrash against my grip, wildly flailing its claws through the air. It was malnourished and frail so it didn’t pose any significant problems for me, although one stray claw did manage to make contact with my wrist, which was inconvenient; someone would be sure to notice and ask some tedious questions about it later on.

Annoyed by the feline’s lack of co-operation, I whipped the penknife out of my pocket and cut across its neck quickly. I had planned to take this much more slowly and instantly regretted my haste when the hot liquid oozed across my fingers and the cat’s limbs twitched, then stilled. I felt an irrational anger at the cat for fighting back when it had so clearly been encouraging my actions only moments before, but that was all much of a muchness now.

I took the blade and cut lengthways down its body. The slippery organs spilled out onto my hands and across the floor, instantly becoming coated in the dust and leaves on the ground under the willow. I stared in fascination at this mess that had, only moments ago, been neatly packed inside a living being. Like the delicate workings of the clock, this simple creature seemed to be so much more than the sum of its parts; it couldn’t be more intriguing to me that these inanimate elements worked together in perfect synchronicity to form a fully autonomous entity, only needing some additional fragile spark of life that could come and go in an instant under the hands of a curious child.

Locked in rapture, I spread the organs out around me, taking in their size, relative positions and the speed of blood coagulation post mortem.

“Et tu, Sherlock?”

I looked up, from what must look like a fairly incriminating scene, to see Mycroft standing at the edge of the willow’s clearing, gathering the fine tendrils of leaves to one side like a theatre curtain.

“I was just...”

“I was hoping we’d have more of a period of grace before this kind of behaviour reared its ugly head, but evidently not.”

“Mycroft, please don’t tell Mummy.”

“Come with me.”

I snapped the silver knife back into its casing and tucked it in my pocket before scrabbling to my feet and following. We went to the side of the stream where I was told to wash the blood off my hands. Some of it had dried and was proving difficult to remove without any soap but Mycroft knelt beside me and took hold of my wrist, taking over the job whilst he chastised me.

“Sherlock, I’m sorry that I’ve been away. I would have liked to have kept an eye on your progress more closely but Cambridge has proved to be somewhat more... engaging than I had anticipated.”

“I haven’t missed you.”

“That is irrelevant. Must you be so puerile, Sherlock? I just want to help you. Do you think that this is acceptable behaviour?”

“I just wanted to see what the inside looked like. It’s easy to look at the outside, why shouldn’t I look on the inside too?”

His eyes didn’t look angry, but were instead filled with sadness.

“You and I will never be like the rest of the world, Sherlock. Things that come naturally to most, you will have to work for; but it’s alright because I can teach you. You aren’t alone.”

“What’s wrong with being alone?”

When my hands were clean and aching from the cold water, we went back to the house and up to Mycroft’s study. I’d been in there a handful of times before, although it held little interest for me and I hadn’t stayed long. He lightly pushed me into a burgundy, Chesterfield armchair by the window whilst he gazed at the wall of books. Seemingly finding what he was searching for, he wedged his hands into the row of books and removed a stack of them simultaneously from the shelf, carelessly putting them on a table to one side, then returning to the ledge. At the back of the shelf where the books had previously covered, Mycroft took out a stack of leather bound journals and brought them over to me.

“You need to read these. Take them.”

Picking up the closest one to me, I unwound the leather strap and opened the front cover. The rich,cream paper inside had a title written in Mycroft’s own impeccable handwriting:

‘The Meet-and-Greet Procedure: Primary and Secondary Contact’

 

“I don’t understand.”

“I have been keeping these since I was about your age. Think of them as instruction manuals for every likely situation you may find yourself in in the coming years. Put them in your room and for God’s sake, don’t let Mummy find them.”

Picking up the twenty-odd journals, I carried them into my room and dropped them down onto my bed. Years ago, I had loosened 2 of the floorboards, under the Persian rug near the window. Here would be a perfect hiding place for these new manuals, these guides to social normality.  
They didn’t seem to be numbered or ordered in any way, so I picked one at random and rested it on my knees.

‘Generalised Concepts of Small Talk: Book 2 of 6’

 

The number six had clearly been written in at a later date, but with the same pen as the rest of the title. A quick skim of the book showed it to mostly contain bullet points and lists, with the occasional longer paragraph; ‘Examples of acceptable subject matter when meeting a stranger at a formal event’ or ‘Possible conversation starters for casual acquaintances’.

I flicked through one or two more of the journals before tiring of them. I flipped back the rug and eased the loose floorboard free with my knife; throwing the books inside and accidentally crushing the spider that had foolishly built its web in my hidey hole.

First Mycroft ruins my summer by returning home from Cambridge and now he’s trying to bore me to death. Typical.


End file.
